I always knew it would happen

For a long time I've joked a bit saying that if I ever wanted to get married I'd probably have to settle for a foreigner who wants a green card. Well, as it turns out, I might have missed that opportunity.

I was on the train this morning heading to Europark, Salzburg's local mall. It's about a forty minute ride from Kuchl, so I settled down with a book. The seats on the train are in groups of four, so it's not practical to sit alone, but even if three of the seats are open, courtesy calls for you to ask before you sit. When I have a book with me and my headphones on, I don't even bother to look up to see who's asking me. I just nod my head and keep to my own business. Most people will do the same. But every now and again, you'll get someone sitting across from you who wants to chat. That's what I got today.

He started off innocently enough. Commented on my book. Said if he tried to read it he would have much too much trouble with the language. Said he'd even have trouble with children's books. I told him I had some trouble, too, since I'm not a native German speaker. That led him to ask where I was from. Sometimes when you're abroad it's a bad idea to admit you're American, but I wasn't sure what else I could claim and get away with. And oh boy, was he excited to hear that I was American. He asked me what on earth I was doing in Austria, what I thought of it, what I think of the language here (yes, the dialect can be a pain), etc. and told me a bit about himself. He's been living in Hallein for a year now, and he has no intention of ever returning to his home country (honestly, if I were him, I don't think I'd want to return either). He's also not too pleased with Austria, but what do you know, going to the United States is a dream of his. And he asked if I could perhaps help him in that endeavor. Another TA in Salzburg has been helping a student figure out a way to spend a year or two in the USA, either as an exchange student at a high school or as an intern somewhere, and the process is complicated. For as much the US claims to be a country of immigrants, we sure do like to keep the immigrants out. I thought this guy on the train was asking me to help him navigate that whole mess of forms and applications, but I declined, saying that I couldn't help him if he couldn't speak English. To my luck, he can't. Then he said that that was okay, but he'd still like to get to know me. I told him I'd be heading back to the States at the end of the month since the semester is over (a little white lie - it's true that the semester is over) so wouldn't have time. Then he told me he could go back to the States with me. Uh, what? That's when he started to talk about "Heiraten"... marriage. Something like, "You know, I could easily get into the US if we were married. And it's easy to get married." Afterall, it is his dream to go the the US, and what are the odds of running into an American on a train like that. It was a sign! Sure, I have trouble with coincidences, too, but really? To his credit, he didn't come right out and ask, "Would you marry me?" But I think the intention was clear enough. Oh man, he thought he was smooth. Luckily, I only had to repeat my line "I can't help you" for about another two minutes before the train got to his stop. He wished me good luck with my journey back to the US and said he was sorry I didn't want to help him. I hope the Austrians on the train who must have been eavesdropping had fun with that one.

The only question now is, since I always felt like I'd have to marry a foreigner who wants a green card and I've now rejected one, will I ever get married? Ha.

A Swissman, a Northern Irishman, and an American walk into a bar...

I took a daytrip to Zurich with a couple friends that I met in my Sprachkurs in Göttingen a couple summers ago, Adrian and Glenn. Zurich is a cute little town (woah, I shouldn't call it little - it's about three times as big as Salzburg), and we did the Swiss thing. Had some fondue, had some Ovomaltine (not Ovaltine), and tried Rivella for the first time (I swear it's liquefied Smarties, meaning the American kind of Smarties, not the European kind). The highlight of the day, however, was that evening.

While contemplating whether or not we should actually pay a visit to the Stüssihof (don't ask), we decided to head back to a cafe we had passed earlier in the day, Cabaret Voltaire. It had a little bit of a Bohemian feel going on but was a bit modern in its own way, too. Now, we're all aware that Adrian is a bit sensitive to anywhere where the people lean a little too far to the left, a little too "links", but Glenn and I had both liked the place, and Adrian agreed to give it a try. When we walked in, we noticed we were a little underdressed, but it didn't really throw us off. We noticed there were quite a few native English speakers, too, but you expect that in a tourist town. It wasn't until we order a drink and were told that we didn't have to pay that we really knew something must be up. A few couples at the next table over noticed our confusion and decided to explain. That night the cafe was reserved for a private event, a wedding, which we had just accidentally crashed.




These couples were all good-natured and told us to enjoy ourselves since we were already there. They told us the bride was Swiss and the groom was Austrialian, (which explained all the English), and that they would get laugh out of the whole thing so not to worry. And when we considered leaving after the first drink, they convinced us not to. Everybody has try it once in their lives, I suppose. Unfortunately, the fun did not last long. Our mistake was standing up to check out the buffet. A cousin of the bride cornered us and asked us, "Kennen wir uns?" Only it was in Swiss German, so I didn't understand her at all. Luckily, Glenn caught it, but instead of playing the dumb card and saying something like "Oh, this is a private party? We didn't realize!" Glenn decided to tell her we knew the groom, which meant we were Australian. The key to really getting away with this stuff is to lie as little as possible. Oops. And just a hint, if you're from Northern Ireland, please don't tell people you're Australian. Because what ends up happening is the Australian bestman comes over and catches you in the lie, which is what happened. Glenn tried to explain to him that it had started out as an honest mistake and that the families at the next table over had more or less giving us their blessing to stay in their stead, but the bestman wasn't hearing any of it. It didn't help that Glenn thought the groom's name was Tom when it was really Dom. We ended up paying for one drink each and heading out (though we each had about a drink and a half, so we still had a win). By chance, in the street as we left we ran into the couples who had an encouraged us to stay. They laughed at us but were proud we tried. Hey, it's a decent story.

Oh, and as it turns out Cabaret Voltaire is the birthplace of Dadaism, so as far at venues to crash a wedding in go, this one was pretty cool. It would be hard to top, so I think I'm going to have to hang up my wedding crashing shoes.

The List

... of places I want to see in Europe. I've got a year and a half to knock this down, and to probably add some more places to it. Anyway, here it is, in no particular order:

London
Prague
Edinburgh
Paris
Madrid
Venice
Warsaw
Budapest
Ireland
Berlin
Göttingen
Freiburg
Vienna
Norway
Hamburg
Dresden
Innsbruck
Klagenfurt
Zürich
Amsterdam
Greece
Anywhere in Russia

Once I took a German class all about books...

Man, I've left this blog alone for a while. But I supposed it's time for a new beginning.

You know, Austria has done one good thing for me that I never expected it to, and that's to get me to read. Since I was a little kid, I hated to read. And that was always a source of shame for me. I felt like I was too intelligent to dislike reading. I was always one of the top students in my class, and staying up there usually entails a decent amount of hitting the books. But try as I might, I couldn't seem to get myself to enjoy it. In fourth grade we had to take reading tests. The school had a list of about 300 books, and after reading one you took a quiz on its content. Each semester, you had to pass at least 4 tests. One semester I was behind, so I quickly read a second-grade-level book called "Leo the Late Bloomer" and took the test on that. I don't know why, but my teacher decided to announce it to the class. My embarrassment from that episode lives on.

Outside of the embarrassment, my dislike of reading has had two major negative effects, the first of which is my incredibly small vocabulary. The toll that took on my SAT verbal section score was clear, unfortunately. And it's almost funny here in Austria that when choosing a text to use in a class, I not only have to consider the words that the students don't know, I have to consider the words I don't know. It's scary that it's not that unlikely that I'll be put on the spot sometime about a word, and the best and only answer I'll be able to give will be "Look it up." But, to be honest, I'm not sure I can totally blame my small vocabulary on my little problem with reading. I say this because my vocabulary in German is also much smaller than it should compared to my grammar abilities, and I've never shied away from the reading I had to do in school for that. German was always the easiest subject, why would I want to? The words just don't seem to stick properly. It might just be that my brain doesn't work that way. Who knows. Probably the most detrimental effect that my dislike of reading had, however, was on my reading speed. I'm really appallingly slow. Finishing 25 pages an hour is actually very good for me (Try getting through a history major at Northwestern like that. Maybe that's why I constantly wanted to rip all my hair out of my scalp). And it doesn't matter how enthralling I find a book. I mean, there were books in my childhood I eventually found that I loved, like Ann Rinaldi's stuff - I ate that up (slowly). But even that took me days to get through. And unfortunately, the longer you have to dedicate yourself to something, the more likely your interest is to wane. That means this whole reading speed thing is a self-feeding problem.

Straight out of college, and none of this seemed to change. I almost got through one book last summer, and it was a book I really thought I was interested. At least since it's a history book, I already know how it ends. Then I got to Austria. Out of habit more out of intent, I had brought a couple books with me. My favorite book,Kidnapped, and The Devil in the White City, something I grabbed in the airport on my way over after my mom stuffed a wad of soon-to-be-useless-to-me American cash into my hands. I was sure it would take me a couple months to get through those two, if I got through them at all. But oddly enough, something on that plane just flipped a switch, and I finished them within a few weeks, gladly. And then I wanted more. Since then, I've not been caught without book. And I really have no idea what did it. Is it that my little farm willage gets lonely? No, I still can't really read in my own room. No matter what, that comfy bed not too far away looks more inviting than a book. And my laptop is much too fun. Is it the fact that I waste a lot of my life away commuting on trains? It's true that I read on the train most of the time now, but I'd be just as happy just listening the the mp3 player I also always have on me. Maybe it's the cafe culture here. Coffee is better with a book perhaps? Or maybe it just gives you a better excuse to drink it alone. Or maybe it's just that my academic brain misses the stimulus, though even with the amount of reading I find myslef wanting to do I'm certainly not on the same level I was at NU. I really can't say for sure. Whatever the cause, I'm glad for the change. Now for the good part. These are the books I've read so far in Austria:

Kidnapped
The Devil in the White City
Dracula
Selbs Mord
Glennkill
Tannöd
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao
(Hm, am I missing one? Or did I really read three German books in a row?)

Now I'm looking for suggestions. Anything, really, but better if it's in German since those are a little easier to come by in this country. I usually trust other people's taste more than I trust my own, so just about anything you offer I'm sure to follow up on. Help me out here, people. This is a good thing, and so unlike me.

And I enjoy moonlit walks....

You know, for as tired as I get of worrying about the train schedules between Kuchl and Salzburg, living in Kuchl really has its benefits. I mean, how many people do you know who can say they've lived in an Austrian farm willage? I'm going to guess not too many. But the best part, the absolute cake-taker, if cake-taker were a term, is the view of the mountains from Kuchl in the moonlight. Since moonlight seems to be rare here, and since there's not much in Kuchl to entice people to spend their evenings here, I haven't gotten to share that view with anyone. Now, I know I'm no poet and no great literary mind, but I thought I'd take a crack at describing it and share what I could.


A picture, especially one taken with an inadequate night setting, cannot do this scene justice. I'm just providing it as a base to start from. Part of the wonderment surely comes from the realization that I have almost nightly that this is in fact the background against which I am currently living my life. Before this, my background had always been suburbia, full of driveways, short little elms, and never too far from a Target or anything you needed. And now it's this, Alps and castles, with the appropriate cows and mountainside churches mixed in. But at night, in the moonlight, it's not just a background. It's all there is. It's completely enveloping. Somehow the black on black, gray on gray, of mountain after mountain and the slight illumination of those peaks tall enough to be capped with snow is at the same time incredibly overwhelming, deafening, and yet completely silent and peaceful. It's a cold kind of feeling that it creates, but not cold in a negative sense, not at all lonely, though it's abundantly clear you are, in fact, alone. No, it's more the good kind of cold that bed sheets sometimes have when you first crawl in. It's a cold that you want to feel, I guess because warmth is sometimes suffocating. There's also some protection factor there that I haven't quite firgured out, because based on location, the thing the mountains would be protecting me from is Germany. I've never really felt a need to fear the Germans. To be honest, I'm a little more wary of the Austrians. Ha. The thing about all this, though, is that it's no good without the moonlight. I mean, sure, the Alps are always the Alps, but even mountains can get old. Without the illumination at night, they sink back into the sky making no statement, they offer no reassurance. In the daytime, in the sun, they're still there, sure, but they're almost exhibitionists then. There's nothing subtle about it. But in the moonlight, it's that quiet reminder of strength that most of us probably need at the end of the day. I know it's exactly what I need.

Is this just schmalz? Maybe. I recognize the cheese factor here. But head to Kuchl to really see it at night, in the moonlight, and I think I won't be the only convert to natural theology then.

Obama wins as Austria watches

Since my absentee ballot never came in the mail, I sadly couldn't actually be a part of history being made on November 4th. But I thought the next best thing would be to watch it being made. The other American TAs and I finally settled on a plan to camp out all night in the TV room of the dorm one of us lives in. We figured we'd either celebrate or console each other depending on the result, but either way, we should be together. Polls on the East Coast started closing at 1am Austrian time, so we woke up from our 2ish hour nap to break out the American treats and all the patriotism we could muster. See, we even broke out the s'mores to get us in the American mood.


By about 2:15, everyone had shown up. I'm impressed with the Brit we've all adopted as our own. She showed up, too. We'll have her speaking and acting just like an American before the year is out. She eats s'mores and peanutbutter on apples now. It's a good start.


I'm glad I got the phone plan that's just 10 cents/minute to call the US, because it meant I got to briefly connect with a friend who was at the Obama Rally in Grant Park. However, that was long before we knew what the results were. It was around 5 am Austrian time when they closed the polls on the West Coast and announced that Obama was (projected to be) the president elect. AND THE CROWD WENT WILD! That's when I was really jealous of my friend in Grant Park. Ugh, all I could get was a picture of Grant Park on the television. So jealous!


Break out the beer, break out the champagne! We toasted the next American president in the good ol' Austrian way.
We may not have been in Grant Park, but satisfaction and relief felt by the good group of Obama fans we had among us was pleasing enough. I'm pretty sure I saw tears in a couple people's eyes.

Hallein gets ready for Halloween?

With nothing but a very lazy Saturday ahead of me, I decided to hop on a train and head to Hallein to see what I could find. I had forgotten that this weekend the Krampusausstellung would be on display. Now, if you know me, then you probably know that I love Halloween.


See, that's me loving Halloween, or rather, me being upset that Austrians don't seem to love Halloween, nor really understand what it is, sadly. Anyway, though I love Halloween, I unfortunately scare very easily. Reading Bram Stoker's Dracula has caused me more than my fair share of nightmares this week, though I won't give it up. Dracula, however, is nothing compared to Krampus. Now there's a being that's really effing terrifying.


At the Krampusausstellung, they had over 600 of these little beasties on display to scare the bejeebus out of every little kid, and a few big kids, too. But like I said, Austrians don't really do Halloween. So why here, why now with all the scary and the creepy and the horns and the fangs? Well, if you know Alpine folklore, you already know the answer. Krampus is associated with a holiday, but no, not Halloween. Krampus's holiday, rather, is Christmas. Yes, Christmas. You see, in mid-continental Europe, bad little children don't get coal in their stockings to let them know Santa has been paying attention. Instead, St. Nicholas sends his goons, a.k.a. a "Pass" of Krampuses, to beat the bad little children with a fist full of branches. This is apparently what Krampus looks like in the farm willage I'm living in, Kuchl. I best be good this year.


This next one, however, was the Krampus I found most terrifying. I think it's the fact that he was one of the few without eyes, since his teeth and horns were by no means the largest or sharpest. It really robs him of any humanity, or any perceivable life (as opposed to death), that a Krampus may otherwise have. Not to mention the fact that the skin had been partly ripped away from his face. Really, if the Austrians wanted to Halloween well, they easily could.


I had to wash those images out of my mind, so I headed off to take pictures of my second two schools. This one is a Gymnasium. Of all Austrian schools, I think a Gymnasium is most like an American high school. It doesn't specialize in a specific vocation or area of interest, and every student who walks through its doors will have the chance to go to college (some schools, usually vocational schools, do not prepare students for the Matura, and without the Matura, an Austrian can't go to college). This is also the largest school I work at with about 700 students. I don't think I'll ever learn any of their names.


This is the third school I work at. It's a fashion design and marketing school - yes, one of the vocational schools in Austria. About half the students will take the Matura, and the other half won't. They have classes on sketching and design, also on the history of fashion. But no, the students, and the teachers, do not have noticeably better fashion than at the other two schools. You'd expect it, though, wouldn't you? It's also the smallest school I work at with about 200 students, and only 5 of them are male. Ha. Maybe I'll be able to learn their names.

This school also happens to be a Catholic school, so every morning they begin the first lesson with a prayer. I was told not all the students are Catholic and that not all are Christian, but I haven't noticed anyone skipping out on the morning prayer. I join in, too, though I haven't been Catholic for years. Since I never got baptized anything else, though, I think if you held a black light up to my forehead, you could still find a Catholic stamp there. Maybe saying the prayer will help keep the Krampuses away. After all, he is pals with St. Nicholas, and the old-school Catholics sure do love their saints.